What state? That's pretty important to what you're saying, for reasons I'll get into at the end of this post. The short version is you don't need to leave the US to be under the same standards of care that I am.

In the civilised world, that's absolutely not the reaction that I've seen. And that includes parts of the US.

Why put up the charade in the first place, if it makes you feel so uncomfortable? Just be yourself, and if people think you're too femmy, fuck 'em.

You really need to check up on some of what's come out of the US in the last little while, then... Last July, there was an edict that came out of the white house requiring that states follow the WPATH SOC. WPATH = World Professional Association for Transgender Health. While the requirements for a D/L may be different from state to state, you can get a passport that identifies you as female with a letter from your doc.

Learn French. Get a Master's degree. Or talk to the consulate about possibly applying as a refugee or discriminated class, but expect to be told no if you do that. The reason? I know for a fact that California, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Washington State, Washington DC, Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all follow the WPATH standards of care with regards to issuing you ID, as do all federal government institutions, including the military. Minnesota even goes beyond the WPATH SOC: you don't need surgery to get a birth certificate that identifies you as female, you just need to go before a judge with two witnesses who say you're female, and they'll issue an order... a friend of mine did that less than a year ago. In other words, you don't need to leave the US to get treated properly.

Perhaps you're living in the wrong part of the country. Or perhaps things have changed in your area and you don't know how... a *lot* has changed in the last 10 years in how transsexuals are viewed by society at large. More and more people understand what a transsexual is, and it is becoming easier for transsexuals to be accepted pretty much everywhere in the world.

Also, you should be aware of what's come out of the White House. Last July, there was a presidential order to the passport office to start issuing passports that identify you as female with a letter from your doc, as per WPATH SOC. July was a pretty good month for LGBT rights in general, actually, with several rule changes coming out of the office of the president.

Perhaps you need to check with a lawyer on that. Human rights do still exist in the US. And perhaps you're living in the wrong part of the US.

It wouldn't even get that far if you'd look into getting ID for it, hun. Or looked at moving to a different part of the country if you're really in such a backwards part of the union.

Again, you don't need to leave the US to get proper treatment. Perhaps you just need to move to a different state. Perhaps a lot has changed since you last looked into it, and you don't have to go anywhere.

And in response to your other post, I know many women who are articulate and intelligent. Perhaps you're working in the wrong field. Admittedly I'm working in a very technical field right now, which is dominated by males, but most of the women that I work with have degrees in computer science or related fields. Even at University, however, I took Philosophy/Linguistics, with a minor in Japanese language.... Linguistics is a field that's dominated by females these days, and the overwhelming majority of them are very intelligent and articulate people. I took electives in subjects ranging from astronomy to maths (I was the only arts major in 3rd year honours calculus) to english lit and film studies, and in all of those fields, I met some very intelligent women (there is a reason what should have been a 4-year degree took 6 years). Since graduation, most of my academic work has been in psychology and cognitive science... psych is another field that's dominated by females, and again, is chock full of extremely intelligent and articulate people.

So perhaps you're living in the wrong state *and* working in the wrong field? Or perhaps you do work with some very intelligent and articulate females, but are focusing on the bad? I know I used to focus on what disgusted me about males, and I developped a real hatred of the male of the species that didn't start to go away until about 6 months after I was full time... now I have several male friends, something that I never would have imagined possible. And here's the kicker: some of those male friends are people that I knew from before. Being out to them isn't an option, and they're still very supportive and good friends. People have changed in the last several years.

I logged into an account I promised myself I would never use again, just to avoid undoing mod points to reply to this. I was sorely tempted to simply moderate you down, but I think that somebody needs to point out a few home truths to you instead.

And lord have mercy on any transsexual that gets clocked in one of those places. Females are far more sexist and closed-minded than any male I know.

Let me share my experience with both genders when caught as the other gender in a place I shouldn't be as that gender.

My experience has been the exact opposite of what you profess. Perhaps it's because I don't think of a place like the ladies' room as a "place I shouldn't be". I have as much right to be there as any other woman. And I have *never* been "caught" as you describe. Despite being 6' tall, and having been a former rugby player, and 250lbs of muscle when I began my transition, I have never once been confronted or challenged in the womens' bathroom, and it's been well over a year since the last time I set foot in the mens' room. The mens' room is the threatening (and dangerous) environment for me, not the ladies'.

I've been full time for over a year, and while the tits help, they're really not that important for your ability to pass: people look at your body language. They look at your dress. If you open your mouth, they listen to your voice. I transitionned on the job and still work for the same company I did before I went full time, and there are people I work with who have absolutely no idea that I'm anything other than a cisgendered female. People don't tend to consider your size or your build unless you give them a reason to, which brings me to my next point:

There's a reason I use the men's bathroom at bars, even if I'm passing. It's just not worth the drama to use the bathroom of the gender I'm presenting as.

If you're constantly worried about being "clocked", as you put it, then people are going to pick up on that. You may be unintentionally sending off signals which make things more difficult for you than it needs to be. If you are thinking about yourself in those terms, then that's all you'll ever be. You will never be the woman that you seem to want to be, because you are afraid to go into the correct bathroom with the confidence and conviction that it's where you're supposed to be.

A guy who sees someone apparently female in the men's room is sometimes surprised or shocked. Sometimes the man will become angry, especially if he's older. But yet, at the end of the day, I have not had a single serious problem with being apparently female, even fixing my hair or something, in the men's room. No police, not a ton of drama.

Now, I don't know myself what it's like to be a guy caught in the women's room, but from what I understand, it involves the police, drama, screaming, more drama, and signs that get posted at clubs saying that "crossdressers" must use the men's room. Then you have to show your papers and make sure you always have that letter from the psychologist that says you may use the women's room. Even though that really carries no legal weight and you're still getting your ass escorted out of the bar anyway.

Again, if you're a transsexual, you're not a crossdresser. Don't think about yourself in those terms, because if you do, you'll never be anything more than a guy in a dress. People will pick up on that self doubt, and they'll look a little deeper. And if you can get that paperwork from your psychologist that says you can use the womens' room, then you can quite easily get a driver's licence that identifies you as female. I didn't even need a letter from my psychologist for it, I simply went to the ministry of transport with a letter from my OB/GYN, who happens to be administering the hormones... that same letter was also good enough to get a passport that identifies me as female. That's in the WPATH standards of care, which is implemented across most of the US, and *is* implemented everywhere else in the English-speaking world (outside of parts of Africa), as well as all of the EU, most of South America, and most of southeast Asia. Behaviour like *you* describe would be seriously illegal in this part of the world, as it would be a violation of my human rights (and was recently read into the constitution as such, yay Canada!). Even in the US, the human rights tribunals have pretty much unanimously agreed that a transsexual has the right to use the bathroom of their preferred gender, as long as they're presenting as such, regardless of what their documentation says.

Look into the drama surrounding a transsexual in an abusive relationship who tries to get into a battered women's shelter, and the truth shall set ye free.

They can't legally turn you away. Know your rights. You didn't choose this life, but if you don't fight for it, then you're going to get trampled by people who are either ignorant of you, or actively belligerent.

A woman just has to sit back and let her body just do its animal functions, because there will always be a man to rush in and save her whether personally or by proxy of government assistance. There will always be someone to feel sorry for her. A woman has no need for something like wikipedia. Wikipedia has man-knowledge, things that men write down so the next generation can build upon it. Woman-knowledge, on the other hand, is always about transient, animal things, like their period or their pregnancy, things they feel in the moment. Woman-knowledge is always renewed, but yet stagnant. Woman-knowledge is not knowledge for building and improving, like man-knowledge is.

I find this statement incredibly offensive. This is anti-feminism at its worst, and coming from somebody who claims to be of the demographic you claim, I am at a complete loss as to how you could be so ignorant of the point of it all. Men and women *are* wired differently, yes, but you clearly don't understand why they're different, or how.... if you want to go back to the animal brain, *way* back when, the breeding strategy was for the male to club the female over the head and essentially rape her. More recently, in hunter-gatherer societies, the majority of the calorie intake was from gatherered food, not hunted food. Humans never evolved to eat meat every day, and that's a major source of the health problems in the western world. And who do you suppose most of the gatherers were? Women. When we moved from gathering to cultivation? Again, mostly it was women (though it was more balanced, usually the women tended the crops and the men tended the livestock). Women were the ones learning about reading the seasons, and using things like the stars to figure out how close the next season was, which was incredibly important to figure out when to plant. *that* type of knowledge is definitely *NOT* transient in nature. Couple it with herbalism and knowledge of ancient medicines, and you have a basis for ancient "witchcraft" and shamanism, most of the practitioners of which (at least in Europe) were female. "female" knowledge most emphatically *is* about building and improving society.

I think you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what it actually means to be female, and what the actual differences are between the male brain and the female brain. Yeah, there are differences, and yeah, females do tend to be more social animals, but it isn't for the reasons that you seem to think: Historically, females aren't as expendible as males, and most of the differences between female wiring and male wiring comes from the fact that people are safer in social groups; by contrast, male individualism probably comes from a drive to spread out and increase genetic diversity by joining other groups, though short of sending an anthropologist back in time to watch, we'll never really know for sure.. And I think you need to do it before you do something drastic and irreversible to yourself.

Uh when I think vampire I think Busty women in corsets. I think the vampire vote is based on the "which will get me laid...forever?" decision tree which means that 71% didn't use it...

For the males in the audience, maybe. For the females, vampire is really the only option on the survey with any draw at all... who wants body hair, or to spend their time lumbering around trying to suck on the flesh of the living? gak. At least there's romanticism in vampires.

I would have chosen yuki-onna if it was on the list, but seeing as /. is a mostly male crowd, I don't think there's a lot of guys here who'd pick a female ghost spirit as their monster.... as it is, I chose vampire. Not because of Ms. Meyer's books (which I really can't stand), but because of the romanticism that surrounds the mythology. The other choices don't really have any romance about them at all. (and yes, there are female vampires... don't you watch Buffy?)

That sounds a little militant... are you thinking of joining the other side?

Either that or put in an author check that automatically spits out an A+ if it detects that the author of the code was himself....

mm... I would point out that most Euro race tracks have other hazards to worry about, though. Hills, sharp turns, left/right turns in a mix, and longer tracks than you find in NASCAR.

I'm not saying that NASCAR drivers aren't good drivers. They are. But I am saying that European Touring Car racing tends to be a better test of an individual driver's skill than a trip around most NASCAR tracks.

It's a good explanation of why Finns are disproportionally represented in motorsport. Certainly better than assuming that having k as a third of the letters in your name makes you good at driving.

I think it has more to do with the 3-year process that the Finns go through to get their license, which includes manditory skid school, snow driving school, and training on loose surfaces.

Not really that crazy, when you think about it.... If you're driving down the middle of a windy unpaved country road, then you have more space to react if you hit a pothole and veer off to the side. You've also got space to react on both sides in case some wayward wildlife steps out in front of you. In my driving experience, I've had to avoid small animals like cats/dogs/racoons, medium-sized animals like deer, and large animals like moose and one bear. (the joys of living in Ontario....)

Now, I'm not saying that the tristate area is exactly Moose Country, but there are certainly deer in KY, and there could be some logic to driving down the middle of the road. People do it up here, too.

Do what my parents did, then... the first time I had an accident, even though the cause was attributed to the weather, I was judged at fault and charged with careless driving (the cop said he had no choice, as I had admitted to hitting the other driver, but strongly recommended I fight it in court... I did and plea bargained to Pass On Right, Not In Safety). My parents told me that I'd have to get my own car insurance from then on. I paid $3000/year until I was 22, and haven't had a single accident or ticket since that one, when I was 17.

It's not a female thing. Some of us are bad drivers. Some are good drivers. The same could be said for people of the XY variant... There's a few guys whose driving terrified me so much I'll *never* get in a car with them again. It's an individual thing, and IMO, it has more to do with the amount of responsibility you accept when you get behind the wheel of the car. Teach your daughter the consequences for her actions, and she'll not grow up to be one of those idiots who puts on makeup while driving on the freeway.

(when I think about it, I did get away with murder... my parents didn't make me pay for the repairs on the car, so their insurance took a hit... when my older brother got a speeding ticket --admittedly, it was for going 160km/h in a 60 zone--, they cut him off their insurance and made him pay the fine)

Why are you suggesting a Firefox addon for a complaint about MSIE 6.0 in an environment where you can be fired for using anything other than MSIE?

If I could use Firefox, I'd be using AdBlock Plus, which blocks flash ads, but doesn't block things like YT.

The free version advertises at you (but it's non-intrusive, just a small box on the far end of the toolbar, no popups, no annoying sound, no shaking the screen).

The trial version of the pay-for version may have bundled stuff, but I've never bothered to install it. :)

They assume that you want them by default, but will charge you for the privilege if you lose them and need to reorder them at a later date. (unless you talk nicely to tech. support, who usually forget to check that box in their call tracking software to bill the end user for the OS discs, but will hit it every time if they hate you)

You missed the part where he said:

Windows 7 magically appeared later

right? That means that at some later point, after he blew away Vista (note, blew it away, not upgraded), the system booted to Windows 7.

The outlet sells open box and returned systems, too. The way their system works, if a system is undeliverable or refused, and the client can't be contacted to arrange delivery, it also gets returned to the outlet for sale. Even though it's never been in the hands of an actual consumer, and you and I would both consider such a system "new", Dell can't actually sell it as a new built-to-order system legally.

Obligatory disclaimer: I used to work for Dell Canada, and it was my job to manage those distressed shipments, ideally getting them to the customer, but if not, getting them to the DFS Direct folks for resale.